


the path less traveled, the road not taken (our tongues trip on mystery.)

by Lexis_Cheshire



Series: after the aftermath (The End has passed) [1]
Category: Lunch Club, SMPLive, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: :D, hell yeah i am vibing, i love this au, wayward worlds au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24669280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexis_Cheshire/pseuds/Lexis_Cheshire
Summary: laugh. there is nothing better to do.speak no lies, tell no truth. sign your life away.silence is your best friend and worst enemy.take a breath and choke on it.fold hands over your heart, kiss your eyelids goodbye.find the beast. slay the princess.six children walk the road less traveled. their heads grow heavy with knowledge. six can keep a secret (if all of them are lost.)missing children tell no lies.EDIT 1/6/2021: cmc has been removed from this work.
Series: after the aftermath (The End has passed) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1784083
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54
Collections: Josh Allen's Home for Wayward Children





	the path less traveled, the road not taken (our tongues trip on mystery.)

**Author's Note:**

> hope y'all enjoy!

charlie can do anything as long as he doesn’t know it’s impossible, never stop to think just Do, manic manic always, strung out on the sound of windchimes and sunlight. the rules are ever-changing, and he's doing fine, he's doing good, he's doing fine until he's not, burning ears of corn and searing his sight on backwards waterfalls.  his eyes jitter in his sockets, jackrabbit heart and hummingbird hands, singing to the unseen beat as notestaves peel off the pages. 

follows a law none of the others will look at, will hear, why can’t you understand that he has to do this? why can’t you see it? writ into the fabric of our universe, the watchers behind the hidden wall? can you see me, behind your screen? his voice lilts, rising and falling and warping with every word, discordant with the air. he stares out from typed words, nonsensical phrase tripping off his tongue, and his joy bubbles on the backdrop of wheat. acid-sharp profiles and splitting 3-D, he unravels his form into base code, bleeding bright colors and brighter laughter-

fifteen trains of thought and the Sky presses down, and the Goop presses up, and he dances in-between on the knife's edge of time, feet tripping over jelly-soft stones. the sun burns down and the bricks scream out and he is pulled down, down, down into the unforgiving embrace of Babel, tailspinning out of reality.

schlatt, stranded in his faerieworld, caged in the tower-maze of giltshine and cough syrup, is lost. he can’t lie, it's not possible, and yet he's better than those who can, sleight of hand and magician’s mystery. distraction and trickery become his trade, clothed in persona for all the haze of time.

his real self cannot be shown. that’s dangerous, your name, your face, your everything, gone in seconds if you let it. he can't see his real self anymore. he wonders if it's there at all.

trust is priceless in its rarity, a commodity people would kill for-lies are cheap and promises are not, a deal cemented in the tangle of pumice fingers. the clatter of coins imprints in his ears and his hands stain with the ash of half-truths, air thick with smoke and loss and greed. the spin of wheels, the roll of dice, spotless suits and black-dyed breath, coughing on thick fog through their masks. 

gold, jewels, gemstones, forever searching, reaching, clawing for better. the soot tastes of desperation, always struggling to climb the ladders-the world is hungry, so, so hungry for everything and more. Avarice eats him up and doesn't spit him out.

noah is more than quiet-he's empty, drained of all substance and sound, undead and resuscitated. drifting through the endless false-everything, he forgets all and speaks not, learning the press of hollow air on his bones. nothing is there and nothing is sacred and nothing can not be broken, and odysseus burns out on wax wings and falls down, down, down into tartarus. he won't return.

the pitch coats his corneas, fills his lungs, invades his veins until he becomes one with everything and one with nothing. beasts of incomprehensible presence and incorporal form, writhing in the recesses of his mind, extending tendrils of oblivion along nerves until his hands no longer feel, his eyes no longer blink, his chest no longer moves.  he sighs out shadows and breathes in night, motionless and unseeing, suspended in limbo, a purgatory of deathless dreams. 

no living and no deceased can touch this land, the infinite divider between everything, gazing into the abyss. (nothing, stares back). he sees all and recognizes nothing, uncomprehending. he is null and he is void, standing in nonexistent corners as [ ] consumes all.

cooper on land is gasping, beached, a fish out of water. he soaks his neck in the waves and forgets to breathe, choking on air and opening his eyes on the bed of the sea. his sight ripples, sun filtering through algae and the tang of salt sharp on his tongue. coral grows on his flesh, vivid as tide-worn glass, and his friends click and greet him in whorls of bubbles and the carousel tide of whirlpools.

his hands never wrinkle, his nails grow jagged and scales multiply on the outlines of his face as he twists through sand and silt and salmon. flaring his fingers, webs spread between the digits, opening and closing to the rhythm of the slits under his jaw. he drags them through the shallows, trawling, and comes back down with shoals of fish in his fists. 

he tilts on his heels and slips through liquid with ease, leaps in the wind as if he’ll be caught by the weight of blue. diving into the deep of trenches without the fear he reserves for tumbleweeds, averting his once-lidded eyes from the sun, sinuous, he contorts through the chasms of ground stone and dropoffs. he catches blood in anglerfish teeth with hair swirling in wavering air and sinks willingly into the depths of Tauchen.

ted shouts, screams, yells, bleach-white like the shells of the dead and gone. dust notes drift off his skin and his hair doesn’t grow, his teeth shining and perfect as pearls. he rages and his skin does not blush, he sobs and his sight does not blur, he slams his fists against pillars of limestone and they come back without a crack, blue-veined marble carved into form. preserved in time, he slams against the frame of dated photos and wields hammer-sound against the glass, shattering against the confines of his unbreakable corpse. 

noise, he covers himself in it until he can forget hollowed eyes and the clack of bone on bone, rituals of skeletons ringed around greyscale flames. his friends live in sepulcher and crypts teem with carcasses, the call of vultures coming to pick the soul from his remains. he learns every human characteristic and crams it into his actions, assimilating the life of everyone else to forget the desolation of his own. shields and swords and arrows, the clang of buckets and far too much personality, overblown eyes and wild, swinging gestures. is he alive?

he wanders through catacomb homes, tombstone houses, wakes each time coughing on the dirt in his grave. mausoleums line ruined cities, crumbled monuments topped with meaningless statues, the tunnels lined with the heads of its denizens. cold candlelight chills the confines of the cadaver he walks in as the ground slopes down.  Katabasis claims him for their own and another is entombed in the ranks of the lost. 

travis snarls when he speaks, half-growls under his words as he crooks his hands like claws. digging in the dirt, vanishing in the tangle of leaves, he returns with vines woven through his hair and bones in his hands. he doesn't know where they came from. he bounds through space at twice the speed, kicking off walls and perching on railings and scaling trees, hunched back and bared teeth and shining eyes narrowed in bloodseeking hunt. 

the jungle chirps and roars and barks and chatters and his voice melts to match, morphing to birdsong and monkey's laugh, howling at the bright of magnesium-flare stars.  his ears flick out and his gait is long, loping in the zebra stripes of treeshade. the silhouettes grow long and his pupils go dark and his smile stays sharp, safety in the hood of gradient skies. the soil thrums beneath his feet.

moon bright are the nights and disks of light shine in his sight, eating meat raw and biting through the plate by accident. soon he forgets what it is.  mercurial in the shine of the reflected sun, he hooks the bend of a knee around the branches and swings through the limbs of everything with grasping palms.  the maw of Menagerie opens wide and swallows him whole.

they are human until they are not, weighted with the mantles of worlds unknown, decay and lifeblood alike. they are the lost, the left, the fallen, tripping with knowledge truths untold. they followed the hidden path.

(there is no going back).


End file.
